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This Is How You Do It: You Sit Down At The Keyboard And You Put One Word After Another Until Its Done. It's That Easy, And That Hard.
-Neil Gaiman
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This Is How You

Neil Gaiman
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This Is How You Do It: You Sit Down At The Keyboard And You Put One Word After Another Until Its Done. It's That Easy, And That Hard.

Understanding the Quote: "this is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard..."

This quote by Neil Gaiman reflects deeply on the theme of inspiring. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Inspiring, Writing, Creativity, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Neil Gaiman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on inspiring and writing. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Inspiring
Writing
Creativity
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Mean
Scary
Do The Stuff That Only You Can Do. The Urge, Starting Out, Is To Copy. And That's Not A Bad Thing. Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People. But The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can. The Moment That You Feel That, Just Possibly, You're Walking Down The Street Naked, Exposing Too Much Of Your Heart And Your Mind And What Exists On The Inside, Showing Too Much Of Yourself. That's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.
Writing
Heart
Play
Set Your Fantasies In The Here And Now And Then, If Challenged, Claim To Be Writing Magical Realism.
Writing
Magic Realism
Fantasy
I Think There Are Several Aspects Of Our Marraige We're Going To Have To Work On." "babes," He Told Her. "you're Dead." "that's One Of Those Aspects, Obviously.
Thinking
Babe
Aspect
So, You Figure They Won't Notice You're Back?" Sneered The Marquis. "just, 'oh Look, There's Another Angel, Here, Grab A Harp And On With The Hosannas'?
Angel
Looks
Harps
Yes. We Both Have A Bad Feeling. Tonight We Shall Take Our Bad Feelings And Share Them, And Face Them. We Shall Mourn. We Shall Drain The Bitter Dregs Of Mortality. Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled, But Halved. No Man Is An Island.
Brother
Pain
Men
The Cat Dropped The Rat Between Its Two Front Paws. "there Are Those," It Said With A Sigh, In Tones As Smooth As Oiled Silk, "who Have Suggested That The Tendency Of A Cat To Play With Its Prey Is A Merciful One - After All, It Permits The Occasional Funny Little Running Snack To Escape, From Time To Time. How Often Does Your Dinner Get To Escape?
Running
Cat
Two
In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.
Morning
Moving
Sleep
Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.
Writing
Years
Next Year
I Noticed A Long Time Ago That The Universe Rewards Belief Systems. It Doesn't Really Matter What You Believe - It'll Be There And Waiting For You If You Go And Look For It. Decide The Universe Is, Say, Run By Secret Enormous Teddy Bears, And I Can Guarantee You'll Immediately Start Running Across Evidence That This Is True.
Running
Believe
Long
When I Was 7, My Proudest Possession Would Have Been My Bookshelf - 'cause I'd Alphabetized All Of The Books On My Bookshelf.
Book
Causes
Possession
There Were People You Could Hug, And Then There Was Silas.
People
Hug
You Get Ideas From Daydreaming. You Get Ideas From Being Bored. You Get Ideas All The Time. The Only Difference Between Writers And Other People Is We Notice When We're Doing It.
Writing
Ideas
Differences
Real Life Doesn't Have To Be Convincing, But Fiction Does.
Real
Doe
Fiction
The Best Advice I Can Give On This Is, Once It's Done, To Put It Away Until You Can Read It With New Eyes. Finish The Short Story, Print It Out, Then Put It In A Drawer And Write Other Things. When You're Ready, Pick It Up And Read It, As If You've Never Read It Before. If There Are Things You Aren't Satisfied With As A Reader, Go In And Fix Them As A Writer: That's Revision.
Writing
Eye
Giving
And I Thought, Eight Years Ago, When I Began Carefully Charting The Progress Of American Gods, Nervously Dipping My Toes Into The Waters Of Blogging, Would I Have Imagined A Future In Which, Instead Of Recording The Vicissitudes Of Bringing A Book Into The World, I Would Be Writing About Not-even-interestingly Missing Cups Of Cold Camomile Tea? And I Thought, Yup. Sounds About Right. Happy Eighth Birthday, Blog.
Book
Writing
Eight
I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No, I Am Brave.
Brave
Coraline
Be Brave
If You Have Something Specific And Visible To Fear, Rather Than Something That Could Be Anything, It Is Easier.
Easier
Visible
Ifs
Books Were Safer Than Other People Anyway.
Book
People
There Was Once A Young Man Who Wished To Gain His Heart’s Desire.
Heart
Men
Desire
She Found Herself To Be Quite Worried That Something Would Jump Out At Her, So She Began To Whistle. She Thought It Might Make It Harder For Things To Jump Out At Her, If She Was Whistling.
Might
Worried
Found
We Make Choices. No One Else Can Live Our Lives For Us. And We Must Confront And Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.
Choices
Our Actions
Accepting
When Angels Go Bad They Are Worse Than Anyone Else. Remember Lucifer Used To Be An Angel.
Angel
Remember
Lucifer
While Clothes Do Not, As The Saying Would Sometimes Have It, Make The Man, And Fine Feathers Do Not Make Fine Birds, Sometimes They Can Add A Certain Spice To A Recipe.
Men
Clothes
Bird
One Cannot Begin A New Dream Without Abandoning The Last [one].
Dream
Lasts
Often You Will Discover That The Harder You Work, And The More Wisely You Work, The Luckier You Get. But There Is Luck, And It Helps.
Luck
Helping
Harder
I Saw The World I Had Walked Since My Birth And I Understood How Fragile It Was, That The Reality Was A Thin Layer Of Icing On A Great Dark Birthday Cake Writhing With Grubs And Nightmares And Hunger.
Life
Dark
Reality
Not Knowing Everything Is All That Makes It Ok, Sometimes.
Knowing Everything
Not Knowing
Sometimes
Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.
Heal
Wounds
There Are A Number Of Paths That Lead To This Place. I Have Been Avoiding Them For Some Small Time, Now.
Numbers
Path
Avoiding
I Remembered That, And, Remembering That, I Remembered Everything.
Remember
Remembered
It's An America With Strange Mythic Depths. I See It As A Distorting Mirror; A Book Of Danger And Secrets, Of Romance And Magic. It's About The Soul Of America, Really. What People Brought To America; What Found Them When They Came; And The Things That Lie Sleeping Beneath It All.
Lying
Book
Sleep
Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.
Fear
Contagious
Graveyard
I Hope You'll Make Mistakes. If You're Making Mistakes, It Means You're Out There Doing Something.
Graduation
Mistake
Mean
Belinda Stared Into The Fire For Some Time, Thinking About What She Had In Her Life, And What She Had Given Up; And Whether It Would Be Worse To Love Someone Who Was No Longer There, Or Not To Love Someone Who Was.
Thinking
Fire
Would Be
Every Ending Is A New Beginning. Your Lucky Number Is None. Your Lucky Colour Is Dead. Motto: Like Father, Like Son.
Father
New Beginnings
Son
The Moment That You Feel That Just Possibly You Are Walking Down The Street Naked...that's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.
Naked
May
Moments
You Shine Like A Beacon In A Dark World.
Dark
Shining
World
It's Quiet. No Cars. No Birds. Nothing.' 'no Radio Waves,' Said The Doctor. 'not Even Radio Four.' 'you Can Hear Radio Waves?' 'of Course Not. Nobody Can Hear Radio Waves,' He Said Unconvincingly.
Doctors
Radio Waves
Car
The Cartoon Me Writes The Books Cartoon People Read In The Cartoon World, Because They Need Things To Read There Too.
Book
Writing
People
I Sat In The Dark And Thought: There’s No Big Apocalypse. Just An Endless Procession Of Little Ones.
Dark
Littles
Apocalypse
If Writing A Novel Is A Year's Exile To A Foreign Country, Writing A Short Story Is A Weekend Spent Somewhere Exotic. They're Much More Like Vacations, More Exciting And Different, And You're Off.
Country
Writing
Weekend
What Would Be The Fun In Doing Things You Know Are Going To Work?
Fun
Would Be
Going To Work
I'm Somebody Who Considers Happiness A Journey, Not A Destination.
Journey
Destination
It Seems To Me That One Of The Most Interesting Things About God As A Concept, If You Decide To Believe In God, Is That God's Ways Are Unknowable. And God Obviously, Look At The World Around You, Does Or Is Responsible For Some Terrible, Terrible, Awful Things. A Young Girl Kidnapped And Kept In The Darkness And Sexually Abused. The Deaths Of Six Million Jews. A Mudslide That Buries A Village. All Of These Things. If God Is Doing The Good Stuff, He's Got To Be Doing That Stuff Too.
Girl
Believe
Interesting
Why Do They Blame Me For All Their Little Failings? They Use My Name As If I Spent My Entire Days Sitting On Their Shoulders, Forcing Them To Commits Acts They Would Otherwise Find Repulsive. 'the Devil Made Me Do It.' I Have Never Made One Of Them Do Anything. Never. They Live Their Own Tiny Lives. I Do Not Live Their Lives For Them.
Names
Devil
Sitting
Write. Finish Things. Get Them Published. Write Something Else While You're Waiting For Someone To Publish The First Thing.
Writing
Waiting
Firsts
The Squirrel Has Not Yet Found The Acorn That Will Grow To The Oak That Will Be Cut To Form The Cradle Of The Babe That Will Grow To Slay Me.
Cutting
Squirrels
Acorns
Being Brave Doesn't Mean You Aren't Scared. Being Brave Means You Are Scared, Really Scared, Badly Scared, And You Do The Right Thing Anyway.
Mean
Brave
Scared
If You Dare Nothing, Then When The Day Is Over, Nothing Is All You Will Have Gained.
Risk
Dare
Ifs
Read. Read Anything. Read The Things They Say Are Good For You, And The Things They Claim Are Junk. You'll Find What You Need To Find. Just Read.
Junk
Needs
Claims
People Want To Forget The Impossible. It Makes Their World Safer.
People
World
Want
I Think I Would Rather Be A Man Than A God. We Don’t Need Anyone To Believe In Us. We Just Keep Going Anyhow. It’s What We Do.
Believe
Men
Thinking
A Piratical Ghost Story In Thirteen Ingenious But Potentially Disturbing Rhyming Couplets, Originally Conceived As A Confection Both To Amuse And To Entertain By Mr. Neil Gaiman, Scrivener, And Then Doodled, Elaborated Upon, Illustrated, And Beaten Soundly By Mr. Cris Grimly, Etcher And Illuminator, Featuring Two Brave Children, Their Diminutive But No Less Courageous Gazelle, And A Large Number Of Extremely Dangerous Trolls, Monsters, Bugbears, Creatures, And Other Such Nastiness, Many Of Which Have Perfectly Disgusting Eating Habits And Ought Not, Under Any Circumstances, To Be Encouraged.
Children
Two
Numbers
Reading Is Important. Books Are Important. Librarians Are Important. (also, Libraries Are Not Child-care Facilities, But Sometimes Feral Children Raise Themselves Among The Stacks.)
Children
Book
Reading
I Was Not Scared Of Anything, When I Read My Book.
Book
Scared
From Meetings And Partings None Can Ever Escape. Nor From Magic.
Magic
Meetings
Parting
He Felt Her Heart Beating Against His Chest. The Moment Began To Transmute, And He Wondered If There Was Something He Should Do. He Wondered If He Should Kiss Her. He Wondered If He Wanted To Kiss Her, And He Realized That He Truly Didn't Know.
Heart
Kissing
Moments
I Only Have Two Kinds Of Dreams: The Bad And The Terrible. Bad Dreams I Can Cope With. They're Just Nightmares, And The End Eventually. I Wake Up. The Terrible Dreams Are The Good Dreams. In My Terrible Dreams, Everything Is Fine. I Am Still With The Company. I Still Look Like Me. None Of The Last Five Years Ever Happened. Sometimes I'm Married. Once I Even Had Kids. I Even Knew Their Names. Everything's Wonderful And Normal And Fine. And Then I Wake Up, And I'm Still Me. And I'm Still Here. And That Is Truly Terrible.
Dream
Kids
Years
She Says Nothing At All, But Simply Stares Upward Into The Dark Sky And Watches, With Sad Eyes, The Slow Dance Of The Infinite Stars.
Stars
Sadness
Eye
I Think I Fell In Love With Her, A Little Bit. Isn't That Dumb? But It Was Like I Knew Her. Like She Was My Oldest, Dearest Friend. The Kind Of Person You Can Tell Anything To, No Matter How Bad, And They'll Still Love You, Because They Know You. I Wanted To Go With Her. I Wanted Her To Notice Me. And Then She Stopped Walking. Under The Moon, She Stopped. And Looked At Us. She Looked At Me. Maybe She Was Trying To Tell Me Something; I Don't Know. She Probably Didn't Even Know I Was There. But I'll Always Love Her. All My Life.
Love
Moon
Thinking
There Are Lots Of Artists In The World. But There's Only One You. And The Only Person Who Has Your Point Of View Is You. If You Decide Not To Make Things, All You've Done Is Deprive The World Of All The Stuff That Only You Could Have Brought To It.
Artist
Views
Done
I Think Of Myself As A Very Lazy Author.
Thinking
Lazy
Literature
I Don't Think I'm Mainstream. I Think What I Am Is Lots And Lots Of Different Cults. And When You Get Lots And Lots Of Small Groups Who Like You A Lot, They Add Up To A Big Group Without Ever Actually Becoming Mainstream.
Thinking
Groups
Different
Love Isn't Quite Desire... Love Is Probably A Little Bit In The Sandman's Domain. Love Is Partly A Dream, It's Partly To Do With Desire, And Sometimes It's Partly To Do With Death, As Well. It's Also Very Often Something To Do With Delirium.
Dream
Love Is
Desire Love
The Problems With Success, Frankly, Are Infinitely Preferable To The Problems Of Failure.
Problem
For Me, I Would Rather Read A Good Book, From A Contented Author. I Don't Really Care What It Takes To Produce That.
Book
Care
Good Book
Sometimes You Wake Up. Sometimes The Fall Kills You. And Sometimes, When You Fall, You Fly.
Inspirational
Life
Failure
He Wondered Whether Home Was A Thing That Happened To A Place After A While, Or If It Was Something That You Found In The End, If You Simply Walked And Waited And Willed It Long Enough.
Home
Long
Enough
I Realized The Other Day That About The Only Author I Genuinely Read For Pure Pleasure Is One Of The Worst Authors In The World, A Guy Called Harry Stephen Keeler, A Long Dead American Mystery Writer. He Was Probably The Greatest Bad Writer America Ever Produced.
America
Long
Guy
I Walk Across The Dreaming Sands Under The Pale Moon: Through The Dreams Of Countries And Cities, Past Dreams Of Places Long Gone And Times Beyond Recall.
Country
Dream
Past
We Have The Right, And The Obligation, To Tell Old Stories In Our Own Ways, Because They Are Our Stories.
Writing
Rights
Stories
She Was Also An Adult, And When Adults Fight Children, Adults Always Win.
Children
Fighting
Winning
You Have A Very Open Relationship With Your Fans." "yes. We Have An Open Relationship. Obviously They Can See Other Authors If They Want, And I Can See Other Readers.
Fans
Want
Open Relationship
A Life That Is, Like Any Other, Unlike Any Other.
American Gods
The Cat Looked As If It Were About To Say Something Sarcastic. Then It Flicked Its Whiskers And Said, "challenge Her. There's No Guarantee She'll Play Fair, But Her Kind Of Thing Loves Games And Challenges.
Sarcastic
Cat
Games
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